Joint world championship leader Pedrosa, who had been just five hundredths of a second off the fastest time after the three free practice sessions leading up to qualifying, struggled with grip in the afternoon hour - forcing him to save a major slide.
"We improved from the morning to the afternoon session. We were lapping at a good pace on race tyres but unfortunately we couldn't improve as much as we usually do with qualifying tyres, it seemed like we lacked a bit of grip," confirmed Dani, who lapped 0.7secs behind pole sitter
Colin Edwards.
"I don't know why, but a lot of riders crashed during this afternoon's qualifying session. All things considered, starting from the second row tomorrow is not so bad. If it's dry for the race we need to improve our rhythm a bit. I hope we will be able to have a dry race because according to the latest weather forecasts it may rain tomorrow. In that case we will only have 20 minutes to prepare our settings for the wet," added the Spaniard.
There were several fallers this afternoon, and Hayden one of them. The American slid off with 18 minutes to go while on a hot qualifying lap that would have put him much closer to the front of the grid.
The tumble also lost Hayden some momentum because it took him a crucial five minutes to 'hitchhike' his way back to his pit and collect his number-two machine.
"Qualifying didn't go to plan, really," began Nicky. "It was okay in the beginning, we were quite up front on race tyres. With my first qualifier I went to first place for a second, then with my second qualifier I just had an easy front push in turn 11 and down I went. I had a pretty good lap going but just didn't get it down.
"The track is so long and so big it took me forever to get back to the pits, a little bit walking, a little bit scooter. Then I just got out on the other bike and did one run and didn't get the chance to improve my time. It was a pity because things were looking quite good on race tyres – this morning I did over race distance and was quite happy.
